Sacred Time : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: I Totally Agree with Donna!
Review: I had to review this book because I could not believe how bad the customer ratings were. This was one of the best books I've had the pleasure to read all year and I think others should read it as well.

Please disregard the bad reviews and give it a try, it will be well worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: Talking Confusion
Review: "Sacred Time" is a story spread over three generations and begins in a Bronx neighborhood. It is read by three different people. When I learned that, I was hesitant about listening to it. The first reader was male and the story was about a boy growing up in a dysfunctional family. He has to share his room with twin cousins, girls, when their father is sent to jail for stealing from his employer. The story continues with daily life and troubles of two families sharing life under one roof.

When the second reader, a female, took up the story, it jumped in years and location. The story became focused on the mother instead of continuing with the son as the first reader had. There was no warning or lead-in to this shift in the story. I was completely lost for the first half of a tape. When I finally "caught up" with what was happening, I had questions about what had happened when the first reader was reading the story. What happened to the "flying twin"? What happened to the friction between the mother and the aunt?

While this is a story that ranges over three generations, the jump from one time to another with no warning really put me off. I was no longer able to follow the story as well as I wanted. It does show what can and does happen to people and families when one decision is made over another. It shows how lives change by these decisions. Unless you are good at listening "between the lines" and like stories that jump around, I would not recommend that you listen to this tape.

Rating:
Summary: Talking Confusion
Review: "Sacred Time" is a story spread over three generations and begins in a Bronx neighborhood. It is read by three different people. When I learned that, I was hesitant about listening to it. The first reader was male and the story was about a boy growing up in a dysfunctional family. He has to share his room with twin cousins, girls, when their father is sent to jail for stealing from his employer. The story continues with daily life and troubles of two families sharing life under one roof.

When the second reader, a female, took up the story, it jumped in years and location. The story became focused on the mother instead of continuing with the son as the first reader had. There was no warning or lead-in to this shift in the story. I was completely lost for the first half of a tape. When I finally "caught up" with what was happening, I had questions about what had happened when the first reader was reading the story. What happened to the "flying twin"? What happened to the friction between the mother and the aunt?

While this is a story that ranges over three generations, the jump from one time to another with no warning really put me off. I was no longer able to follow the story as well as I wanted. It does show what can and does happen to people and families when one decision is made over another. It shows how lives change by these decisions. Unless you are good at listening "between the lines" and like stories that jump around, I would not recommend that you listen to this tape.

Rating:
Summary: And Ms. Hegi's point is?
Review: Early on, I found the author's descriptions of the characters and their Bronx neighborhood both charming and (as a displaced Bronxite of the generation represented by the book's central figure) right-on. Unfortunately, the personal journey each of her characters pursues over some forty-plus years was hopelessly flat and failed to sustain my interest as I labored through to the last, unrevealing chapter. I found myself wondering what point Ms. Hegi was trying to make. Whatever she was aiming at, it never came to fruition.

Rating:
Summary: A beautifully crafted novel
Review: I always read the Amazon book reviews but rarely write them myself. After reading the previous reviews, I feel compelled to voice another opinion on this book. Having read all of Hegi's work, I was eager to read her latest novel.Until the end of the first chapter, I was very disappointed. Being written from the point of view of a child, the ideas and writing seemd sophmoric and completely unlike the poetic and meaningful writing of Hegi's previous novels. The dramatic end of the 1st chapter changes all of that & signals the thrust of the rest of the book which is the life of a family as it moves through time from several of its members' points of view and how it is shaped & impacted by a tragedy. Hegi is a master of manipulating the tools of story telling and in her past novels she employs various interesting writing techniques to try to approximate the changing and often abstact nature of experiencing life. This book is no exception. She jumps ahead several years as she switches from chapter to chapter and to the point of view of another family member. Some things are made clear while much is left unsaid. This book does not proceed in an orderly fashion from event to event so it may unsettle some readers . But one of Hegi's greatest strengths is her abilty to portray the thoughts and emotions of her characters as a person really experiences them: in flashbacks,in snatches of rememberances, in emotional reactions. She is also very gifted at presenting a single happening from so many different points of view thereby really giving one a more complete understanding of an event's true impact. Reading Hegi is like looking at a character's family photo album and reading his/her journal. It is raw life stripped down to it's true nature & presented in a profound and poetic way. The point of this novel is the impact a single event can have on a family and its subsequent generations & how people are shaped by the forces of time, events and our interactions with one another. In order to capture such an unwieldy subject matter she has pared down her narrative to it's emotional essence. It's an absolutely beautiful novel. I have only a few pages left and I don't want it to end. If you are the type of person who enjoys looking at another person's family photos you will love this book. I cannot imagine having the genius to write this well.

Rating:
Summary: A family saga that disappoints
Review: I got this book because Ursula Hegi wrote an Oprah Winfrey pick "Stone From the River" some years ago and I remember enjoying that book.. While I love a good family saga, I cared nothing about any of the characters in this book. It was tedious, boring and repetitive. The premise of how an act in childhood affects members of several families for years to come seemed intriguing, but it was the only reason that held me to the end and then I realized that the book was actually a waste of time.

Rating:
Summary: Can't believe I actually wasted my time.....
Review: I make it a practice to ALWAYS finish a book no matter how horrible it may be. This book is making me change that rule. I actually finished the whole thing, though I am not sure why. The only reason it got 1 star is because about 4 pages of it were funny. I am sure there is a bunch of deeper meaning that I missed but I am not sure even that would have saved this book. I usually check out Amazon and reader reviews before I read a book. For some reason I did not heed their warning.

Rating:
Summary: remarkable look at how one event has lasting impact
Review: In 1953, seven years old Anthony Amedeo lives what he perceives is the good life in his Bronx neighborhood as the only child. His father has a thriving catering business and his stay at home mother dotes on Anthony. Anthony's idyllic childhood changes when his Uncle Malcolm is back behind bars, forcing Aunt Floria and their eight-year-old twin daughters to move into the Amedeo fifth floor apartment; the twins share Anthony's previously private room. Not long afterward, one of the twins falls out a window to her death.

The tragedy haunts Anthony over the next four plus decades as he not only witnessed the fall of his cousin and never quite got over that first touch of death, his mother and aunt believed he pushed his cousin out the window. Living with that undeclared sentencing by his beloved family, Anthony feels all alone in spite of marriage and success as a chef.

Though a bit confusing as there are three eras not smoothly transitioned, SACRED TIME is a remarkable look at how one event lasting seconds can have major impact over the lives of those immediately involved and even later on others for example spouses. On a mega level such as 9/11 this seems obvious, but Ursula Hegi's message is that on the micro family level, relationships are impacted by events such as the death of the twin. The cast is a delightful Italian-American Bronx family who never look at Anthony the same way after his cousin's death. However, the biggest bearer of misfortune besides the victim is Anthony, who perceives what his loved ones believe of him. This is a strong character study of the long term consequences of a tragedy.



Rating:
Summary: elegantly simple and triumphantly natural
Review: Ursula Hegi opens her novel Sacred Time with deceptive simplicity: the first paragraph contains only one sentence, "That winter of 1953, stenciled glass-wax decorations appeared on nearly every window in the Bronx, and Uncle Malcolm was sent to jail for stealing stamps and office equipment from his last new job." The same bare elegance runs throughout, somehow creating a subtly complex and motivated story out of clear, uncomplicated prose. The novel has the impact that it does because Hegi selects the perfect words, constructs layers of rich atmosphere, and forces the reader to fill in not only sundry details, but major plot points as well--she tends not to finish one subplot until long after several new ones have started, which results in a novel that is truer to life than the books whose chapters each contain a perfect capsule of introduction, rising action, climax, and dénouement.
A novel that spans three generations and two continents could easily become stretched, with too few delightful specifics and too many underdeveloped story lines. Hegi does a good job, however, of making Sacred Time fill out its expansive framework, partly by letting all the stories grow naturally out of previously-recounted events. Her multiple narrators echo each other in their own words, and stories that are only hinted at in some chapters burst into full and satisfying bloom in later sections. By combining this intriguing structure with effortless prose and delicious details, Ursula Hegi creates in Sacred Time a novel that is as compelling as it is thought-provoking.
At under 250 pages, Sacred Time is a fairly quick read, but make sure to have some cannelloni or calzones on hand before you start, because it will be as hard to resist your cravings for the traditional Italian fare that appears throughout as it will be impossible to put the book down before reading the last, triumphant sentence.

Rating:
Summary: fear, recrimination, remorse intertwine in compelling novel
Review: What should a family do when its fabric has been irreparably torn by an unintended tragic accident? Should its members seek to forget and minimize the trauma caused by sudden loss? How can those who suffer from guilt face those who have rage boiling beneath an appearance of acceptance? Ursula Hegi tackles these issues in her compelling and important novel, "Sacred Time," a work which tracks one family's journey through fifty years of suppressed mourning, recrimination and remorse.

Hegi is at her best when she focuses on Anthony Amedeo, who is at the epicenter of tremors unleashed by a fatal accident which he innocently abetted during his Bronx childhood. "Marked and isolated" by his involvement in the accident, suffused with "dread and fear," Anthony's life has been marked by his conscious repudiation of wants. He has concluded that his childhood desire -- for his own space, his own toys, his own personality -- has caused his family to fracture. Confiding to his estranged wife as an adult, Anthony's characterization of himself as "the devil" encapsulates his self-hatred, his suspicion that life offers little to hope for and much to be afraid of.

The loss of his cousin is "one huge ripple -- a tidal wave, rather" that "seized" all the members of his family and "flung" them into a territory where there is "no common focus, only conflicting angles of vision, colliding and aligning" in a "chaotic mosaic." Marraiges crumble; silences replace language, and the children affected by the tragedy struggle to regain their bearings. Anthony's cousin Belinda is haunted by the absence of her twin sister, and it is with great difficulty that she emerges as an intact adult.

Hegi is masterful in her recreation of the Bronx during the McCarthy scare of the early 1950s. Her use of dialogue advances a crisp narrative, and she seems to have a genuinely compassionate sensitivity for the life of a child whose dreams are altered first by family circumstances and then by tragedy. Anthony's mother, Leonora, is by far the most complicated and satisfying of the adult characters of the novel.

Less convincing is the author's treatment of Anthony's aunt Floria. Over one-third of the novel explores her psychological metamorphosis, and much of that simply doesn't work. Floria's extended stay in Italy devolves into maudlin melodrama; her death is depicted in a quasi-Joycean stream of consciousness that is contrived and predictable. Hegi doesn't seem to realize that the greatest strength of "Sacred Time" is its treatment of serious emotional questions through a powerful narrative. When she overwrites or gets bogged down in psychobabble, her novel becomes mundane.

Early in the novel, the child Anthony rejoices at the stories told by his family. His mother and aunt compete to retell, embellish and recreate "one thread of a story and spin it along." With "passion," family members listen, then "leap into a story and spin it along." "Sacred Time" succeeds because it advances Anthony's odyssey through the thread of a story, a thread which finds itself in the lives of the entire Amedeo family. That thread of hidden fear, unspoken grief and unforgiven remorse, when stitched properly, makes this a novel worth reading and remembering.